Race to rebuild in Burlington

It’s been exactly one week since heavy rains wreaked havoc in Burlington, causing flooding in the city’s streets and homes, leaving residents to deal with significant damage to their homes.

Every single restoration company we spoke with today says they are still fielding numerous calls from homeowners whose properties were damaged by the flash flooding. Most of the immediate emergency situations have been attended to. But now they are getting calls from those who tried to do the clean up themselves, but who now need help from a professional. so for some, the recovery process has just begun.

The clean-up in Burlington continues one week after flash flooding damaged an estimated two thousand homes. Restoration crews have been working round the clock, and even one week later they’re still busy fielding calls from homeowners.

Rex Alarcon, Al-Care Disaster Kleenup: “We still are getting a trickle of claims coming in as we go, so people are still calling in, reporting claims and we’re responding to those as well.”

Jeff Heidbuurt, Al-Care Disaster Kleenup: “It’s a pretty big volume, we handle you know, three to five a day on a normal thing and now we’re getting 25 to 30 a day.”

Al-Care says its bringing in additional crews from outside the Burlington area to deal with the hundreds of calls its received to date.

They’re cutting out the drywall, ripping out the flooring, and sanitizing basements. while the emergency situations have been sorted out first, Al-Care says homeowners realizing the task is too big to deal with themselves are now calling in the professionals.

Jeff Heidbuurt: “The flash flooding which caused this damage was all done with two months worth of rain falling in just one day. And there is still more torrential rain in the forecast for southern Ontario which will impact the restoration process. We won’t get to reconstruction, we’ll be able to get to the reconstruction quite a bit later that’s part of the problem. The administration of all the things that have happened are usually where some of the delay happens.”

So the clean up continues, though crews are bracing for a setback with more wet weather in the forecast.

Al-Care Disaster Kleenup says it is ready to deal with any more flash flooding and that more crews are on standby. But the clean up process really has only just begun. It’s going to take between one and six months to have homes completely back to normal.